Book Club Questions for The Broken Way

1.Voskamp opens by describing a scar on her wrist — a mark of years of secret self-harm — and her struggle to believe that broken things can be beautiful or useful. What was your immediate emotional response to that kind of raw honesty from an author? What does it make you expect from the rest of the book?

2.She introduces the central metaphor of eucharist: bread that is taken, blessed, broken, and given. Why do you think she chooses this image as the organizing picture for the whole book? What does it suggest about the relationship between brokenness and gift?

3.Voskamp asks early on whether there is a way to live that is larger than our pain — a way through, rather than around, suffering. Where have you personally tried to go around pain rather than through it? What happened?

1.Voskamp returns again and again to the eucharistic sequence: taken, blessed, broken, given. In this chapter, she argues that this is not just what happened to the bread at the Last Supper — it is the shape of every faithful human life. Do you find that sequence comforting or frightening? Why?

2.She reflects on how Jesus gave thanks (the word eucharist means 'thanksgiving') before he broke the bread — not after the breaking was resolved, but in the middle of it. What does it mean to give thanks in the breaking, before you can see the outcome? Have you ever experienced that kind of prior gratitude?

3.Voskamp uses the image of a grain of wheat that must fall into the ground and die (John 12:24) to talk about how abundance comes through surrendered brokenness, not through self-protection. Where in your life are you most tempted to protect yourself from the falling and dying that might lead to fruit?

1.Voskamp argues that most of us are living for an abundance that is really just accumulation — more stuff, more comfort, more control — rather than the genuine abundance Jesus promised in John 10:10. What is the difference between those two kinds of 'more'? Which one are you more often chasing?

2.She reflects on her own childhood wounds — a sister killed in a farm accident, a father's grief, a mother's silence — and how those early fractures shaped her sense of self and her relationship with God. How have the fractures of your own story shaped how you see yourself and how you see God?

3.Voskamp introduces the idea that brokenness can either harden us into self-protection or soften us into self-giving — and that the direction it takes depends largely on where we bring it. Where do you tend to bring your pain? To God? To trusted people? To distractions? To no one?

1.Voskamp uses the Greek word koinonia — often translated 'fellowship' but carrying the deeper meaning of 'sharing in' or 'communion' — to describe the kind of intimacy that becomes possible between broken people. How does her definition challenge the surface-level fellowship most of us experience in church or community?

2.She argues that one of the greatest barriers to real communion is the performance of wholeness — the unspoken agreement in many communities that we will all pretend to be fine. Where do you feel most pressure to perform wholeness? At church? At work? Online? With family?

3.Voskamp writes movingly about her friendship with a woman she calls her 'kindred friend' — the kind of relationship where both people have allowed the other to see the worst of them and stayed anyway. Do you have a relationship like that? If not, what is preventing you from cultivating one?

1.Voskamp reflects on Hagar's name for God in the wilderness: El Roi — 'You are the God who sees me.' She argues that being seen is one of the deepest hungers of the human soul. Do you agree? Where in your life do you most feel unseen or invisible?

2.She distinguishes between being observed (noticed for our performance or our usefulness) and being seen (known in our actual state, including our brokenness). Where in your daily life are you mostly observed rather than seen? How does that feel over time?

3.Voskamp writes about the practice of giving someone your full, unhurried attention as an act of love — a form of seeing. She calls this a gift that costs nothing materially but everything in terms of presence. How well do you offer that kind of attention? What typically interrupts it?

1.Voskamp uses the word 'cruciform' — cross-shaped — to describe the kind of love that goes down before it rises, that gives before it receives, that serves rather than demands. In your own words, what does cruciform love look like in everyday life — at home, at work, in friendship?

2.Philippians 2 describes Jesus as one who 'emptied himself' — took on the form of a servant, humbled himself to the point of death. Voskamp says this self-emptying (kenosis) is the pattern we are called to imitate. Where does that call feel most costly or impossible to you right now?

3.She reflects honestly on her own marriage — the friction, the misunderstanding, the ways love can become transactional or defensive rather than freely given. How does the broken way challenge the most intimate relationships in your life? Where do you tend to keep score rather than give freely?

1.Voskamp is honest that the broken way is not a formula for pain relief — it is not a promise that following Jesus will resolve your circumstances. She says the miracle is often not the removal of the mess but the transformation that happens inside it. How does that land for you? Does it feel like truth or like a cop-out?

2.She reflects on the scene at Lazarus's tomb — Jesus arriving four days late, Mary and Martha weeping, 'Lord, if you had been here...' — as the posture of every broken person who has waited for God to show up on time. When have you most felt like Mary or Martha at that tomb? What did you do with that feeling?

3.The shortest verse in Scripture — 'Jesus wept' (John 11:35) — gets significant attention from Voskamp. She argues that God weeping with us before He acts is itself a form of miracle. Why might God's tears matter as much as God's intervention? What does it mean to you that Jesus wept?

1.Voskamp describes concrete practices of self-giving — writing letters, giving to strangers, entering into others' suffering in small, uncelebrated ways — and argues that abundance comes through the accumulation of such small acts. Does that seem too small to you, or does the smallness of it actually feel manageable? Why?

2.Luke 9:23–24 says, 'Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.' Voskamp treats this as a practical, daily instruction, not just a theological statement. What does it look like to 'lose your life' on an ordinary Tuesday?

3.She is honest that self-giving can become its own form of self-protection — busyness for others as a way to avoid the inner work of being known or of resting. How do you distinguish between genuine giving and the kind of 'helping' that is really running away from yourself?

1.Voskamp references Colossians 1:24 — Paul's mysterious claim that he 'fills up in his flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions' — and argues that human suffering, offered to Christ, can participate in His redemptive work. How do you understand that verse? Does it comfort you or trouble you?

2.She draws on her visit to the Syrian refugee camp to press the question of solidarity: what does it mean to stand with people in their suffering when you cannot fix it? How does physical, embodied presence change anything?

3.Voskamp is careful to say that suffering is not good in itself — only God's presence in it and God's redemption of it make it anything other than tragedy. How does that nuance matter? Have you ever heard suffering glorified in a way that felt spiritually abusive rather than life-giving?

1.Voskamp returns to the parable of the Prodigal Son and focuses not on the son's return but on the father's running — the undignified, rushing, robe-lifting sprint toward the one who is broken and ashamed. What does the father's running say about how God receives us in our brokenness?

2.She reflects on the older son as a figure of the person who has performed faithfulness but never received the father's embrace — someone who has stayed 'in the house' but does not actually live there. Which son do you most identify with, and why? Is there a way in which you are the older son even when you think you are the younger?

3.Voskamp writes that the broken way ends not in more doing but in a particular kind of rest — the rest of being known and received rather than the exhaustion of earning and performing. What would it look like for you to stop performing and simply receive? What makes that so hard?

1.When you began this study, what brokenness were you carrying — named or unnamed — that you were hoping the book might speak to? Looking back, how has it spoken to that thing? What has shifted, even slightly?

2.Which chapter or week of this study was the most personally impactful for you, and why? What specific idea, image, or question from that chapter is still living in you?

3.Voskamp's central claim is that the broken way — the eucharistic life of being taken, blessed, broken, and given — leads into more abundance, not less. Has this study changed the way you define abundance? If so, how?